Subject: [Asrg] 2. Legal - FTC Seeks Public Comment on Adult Content Spam Rule

From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:59:11 -0500

From the FTC website (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/01/adult.htm), this 
will be enacted WITHIN 120 DAYS.

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FTC Seeks Public Comment on Adult Content Spam Rule

As required by the CAN-SPAM Act, the Federal Trade Commission today 
announced a proposal to establish a mark or notice that will be required 
for inclusion in spam that contains sexually oriented material. The 
purpose of the mark or notice is to inform the recipient that a spam 
message contains sexually oriented material and to facilitate filtering 
of such spam messages. Establishment of a mark to accomplish these 
purposes is one of several actions that Congress has directed the 
Commission to undertake by enacting the CAN-SPAM Act, which was signed 
into law on December 16, 2003.

A Federal Register Notice to be published shortly will seek public 
comment on the proposal. The CAN-SPAM Act requires the Commission to 
prescribe the mark or notice within 120 days after passage of the Act. 
Because of the statutory deadline, the comment period ends on February 17.

The FTC proposes to adopt a rule prescribing the phrase 
“SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT-CONTENT: ” as the mark or notice mandated by the 
CAN-SPAM Act. The proposed rule also would follow the intention of the 
CAN-SPAM Act to protect consumers from unwitting exposure to 
pornographic images in spam, by requiring this mark to be included both 
in the subject line of any e-mail message that contains sexually 
oriented material, and in the electronic equivalent of a “brown paper 
wrapper” in the body of the message. This “brown paper wrapper” would be 
what a recipient would initially see when opening a message containing 
sexually oriented material. It would include the prescribed mark or 
notice, certain other specified information, and no other information or 
images. The proposed rule would include a “definitions” section to 
clarify that certain terms taken from the Act and appearing in the rule 
have the definitions prescribed by particular referenced sections of the 
Act. Finally, the proposed rule would include a severability provision, 
so that in the event a portion of the rule is struck, the remainder of 
the rule will stay in effect.

The Commission vote to approve publication of the Federal Register 
notice was 5-0.

Questions or comments can be directed to [email-masked] or to 
Jonathan Kraden at 202-326-2614.

Copies of the federal register notice are available from the FTC’s Web 
site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response 
Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. 
The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and 
unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information 
to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint, or to 
get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free, 
1-877-FTC-HELP (1 877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at 
http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity 
theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a 
secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law 
enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Claudia Bourne Farrell,
Office of Public Affairs
202-326-2181
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Yakov
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Yakov Shafranovich / asrg <at> shaftek.org
SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc. / research <at> solidmatrix.com
"All that is gold does not glitter" (LOTR)
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